Media Server PC

TJ99 said:
Well, I also have Sickbeard, Couchpotato and an ftp downloader running full time on mine with no issues, it's really surprising how much you get out of those low-power CPU's.

The price of the new ones does seem to be a problem though. R2000, are you freaking kidding me? I guess it was inevitable with the large numbers they were selling after everyone caught on, sooner or later, good old SA greed would kick in.
Click to expand...

Okay, I think we're talking in circles here. The bottom line is: Is a HP Microserver recommended as a Plex Media Server? The simple answer is no it is not (http://wiki.plexapp.com/index.php/F...ode_the_type_of_media_that_I_want_to_watch.3F). This is only for running PMS, by adding something like SABnzbd it adds a lot more processing strain when it's processing archives.

Can you run PMS on a Micro Server? Sure, but you will run into issues when transcoding higher bitrate streams and multiple streams. I have a N36L at home which I use only for XBMC, I used to have SABnzbd and all that stuff on there too but moved it all to my main box because when SAB was extracting something it would kill my CPU and anything I was watching would start stuttering.

Use it, don't use it.
 
The new Gen 8 MS should do a better job of PMS, and they should be available shortly.
 
While I'm quite happy with the N36L for my current purposes (bought for 1k) it seems the retail on the current version is closer to R2300 and there are probably better options to be had. The power consumption and ability to take 5 hard drives is great so it remains an attractive option for a NAS. For a setup under 2/3TB * 5 it's still a good option to have a MS based NAS type system and then have a "desktop" with better aesthetics for doing transcoding duties.
 
Looking for a tiny media/file server PC like the hp n40nl but with a little more grunt. Dual core with 4gb ram, tiny case aswell. Pre-built is pref.
Click to expand...

Would one of these do the job?
 
kayvee said:
The new Gen 8 MS should do a better job of PMS, and they should be available shortly.
Click to expand...

I would like to see how much they are going to be priced at. Pity they are no longer plain black too, that silver front just ruins it for me - I liked the old black ones because they fit nicely into a media center setup, now the thing is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
I would like to see how much they are going to be priced at. Pity they are no longer plain black too, that silver front just ruins it for me - I liked the old black ones because they fit nicely into a media center setup, now the thing is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
Click to expand...

It's only the door that's silver and it should be removable like the old ones, so it's going to be a simple task to take it down to the local powder-coater and getting it back to black.

Hell, even a can of flat black would do the trick.

EDIT: There we go Doc, pick your colours.
 
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TJ99 said:
Well the Proliant Microserver does have a dual-core CPU and you can put in up to 8GB of RAM if you want. If you want something more powerful for some bizarre reason, you'd probably have to build it yourself, home media servers aren't really available in SA pre-built from what I've seen. Pretty easy to do but expensive - just the case will probably cost more than the microserver.

Sickbeard etc. should be able to download to any location on your network, provided the target PC is on of course. Which raises the question, why not just let your other PC download it then?
Click to expand...
I think he's got the same issue as me with leaving a PC on 24/7/365.

My HTPC has a 250w PSU, so say it uses all of that power for an entire day, that would consume 6kwh (180kwh per month!!!) which is a hell of a lot of power wasted if you only really watch movies from it for about 3 or 4 hours a day :) . I'll explain my new setup below.

Also Sickbeard doesn't download anything, it identified things to download and then pushes it to SAB to do the actual download.

TJ99 said:
At pre-defined times? Because as far as I know it moves them immediately after download. Won't work if the PC is off.
Click to expand...
What I have is a Raspberry Pi.

On both the Pi and my HTPC I have OpenElec running and both are connected to my router.

The Pi has a 16GB SD card which I sort of use like a cache for all my downloads and the HTPC has 1TB (I'm looking to add a 2 or 3 TB to this).

I have set up the HTCP (using SABnzbd) to switch the HTPC on at 3 every morning and turn it off again at around 4 ish).

During the aforementioned hour the following things take place:
  • CouchPotato starts searching for new movies based on my criteria
  • It then pushes these to SABnzbd on the Pi (using the Pi's SABnzbd's API) to initiate downloading
  • CouchPotato then scans the SD card of the Pi for all movies downloaded during the preceding 22 hours
  • It then moves these movies to the HTPC's HDD and deletes it from the Pi
  • It then renames the movies to a more user friendly format
  • SickBeard starts searching for new episodes of my series
  • It then pushes these to the Pi's SABnzbd
  • SickBeard then starts scanning the SD card of the Pi for new episodes
  • It then moves the episodes to the correct series folder and renames it to a user friendly format
  • Then it deletes it from the Pi
  • Both SB and CP then update my library (adds movie, episode info, etc)
  • SABnzb on the HTPC then sends me a mail to tell me what all it had done
  • If at any time during the above proves the HDD of the HTPC is idle for more than 5 minutes it shuts down (its usually just before 4)
 
Forgot to mention total power consumption of the Pi

At 5v and using a 700mA adapter it has a power consumption of 3.5watt. That gives me a daily consumption of 0.0035w * 24h = 0.084kWh

Or a total monthly power consumption of 0.084kWh * 30 days = 2.52kWh.

So that's 180kWh vs 2.52kWh
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
That looks really awesome. Wonder what the cost is on those - it's like a Raspberry PI on acid!
Click to expand...

They are pretty cool but a little pricey for what they are. Rebeltech's website has the Celeron at R2k3 and the i3 starting at R3k6 but I don't know if you might find better pricing elsewhere. Note a lot of the advertising I have seen for these does not include HDD, RAM or OS so read the small print before buying.
 
YingYang said:
I think he's got the same issue as me with leaving a PC on 24/7/365.

My HTPC has a 250w PSU, so say it uses all of that power for an entire day, that would consume 6kwh (180kwh per month!!!) which is a hell of a lot of power wasted if you only really watch movies from it for about 3 or 4 hours a day :) . I'll explain my new setup below.

Also Sickbeard doesn't download anything, it identified things to download and then pushes it to SAB to do the actual download.

What I have is a Raspberry Pi.

On both the Pi and my HTPC I have OpenElec running and both are connected to my router.

The Pi has a 16GB SD card which I sort of use like a cache for all my downloads and the HTPC has 1TB (I'm looking to add a 2 or 3 TB to this).

I have set up the HTCP (using SABnzbd) to switch the HTPC on at 3 every morning and turn it off again at around 4 ish).

During the aforementioned hour the following things take place:
  • CouchPotato starts searching for new movies based on my criteria
  • It then pushes these to SABnzbd on the Pi (using the Pi's SABnzbd's API) to initiate downloading
  • CouchPotato then scans the SD card of the Pi for all movies downloaded during the preceding 22 hours
  • It then moves these movies to the HTPC's HDD and deletes it from the Pi
  • It then renames the movies to a more user friendly format
  • SickBeard starts searching for new episodes of my series
  • It then pushes these to the Pi's SABnzbd
  • SickBeard then starts scanning the SD card of the Pi for new episodes
  • It then moves the episodes to the correct series folder and renames it to a user friendly format
  • Then it deletes it from the Pi
  • Both SB and CP then update my library (adds movie, episode info, etc)
  • SABnzb on the HTPC then sends me a mail to tell me what all it had done
  • If at any time during the above proves the HDD of the HTPC is idle for more than 5 minutes it shuts down (its usually just before 4)
Click to expand...

Sounds good, but I think you're forgetting something. The 250W (or 150 in the microsever) is the MAX power draw, usually it will only be a small fraction of that and it will almost never reach full power. The microserver uses something like 25w while booting up, which is quite an intensive process. If it's left on to idle during the day, the hard drives switch off, the cpu goes into a low power state, etc so it uses minimal power. This happens on any PC of course, but something like the microsever or a laptop, that's designed for low power operation, will be even more efficient. Not quite as low power as the pi though.
 
TJ99 said:
Sounds good, but I think you're forgetting something. The 250W (or 150 in the microsever) is the MAX power draw, usually it will only be a small fraction of that and it will almost never reach full power. The microserver uses something like 25w while booting up, which is quite an intensive process. If it's left on to idle during the day, the hard drives switch off, the cpu goes into a low power state, etc so it uses minimal power. This happens on any PC of course, but something like the microsever or a laptop, that's designed for low power operation, will be even more efficient. Not quite as low power as the pi though.
Click to expand...
Fair enough :)
 
Apologies but I was away for a bit. As stated Plex works well when only 2 devices are streaming but at my house that can increase up to 5-6 streams(2 being HD) and it will kill the server unfortunately.
Luckily it was exam season and things cooled down a bit but I'm going to re-purpose my PC as a media pc and use the HP as a backup/download server.

Using the updated Plex client but still no joy.

OOC: How do you use the multi-user suport? They weren't to forth-coming on how this works.
 
YingYang said:
I think he's got the same issue as me with leaving a PC on 24/7/365.

My HTPC has a 250w PSU, so say it uses all of that power for an entire day, that would consume 6kwh (180kwh per month!!!) which is a hell of a lot of power wasted if you only really watch movies from it for about 3 or 4 hours a day :) . I'll explain my new setup below.

Also Sickbeard doesn't download anything, it identified things to download and then pushes it to SAB to do the actual download.

What I have is a Raspberry Pi.

On both the Pi and my HTPC I have OpenElec running and both are connected to my router.

The Pi has a 16GB SD card which I sort of use like a cache for all my downloads and the HTPC has 1TB (I'm looking to add a 2 or 3 TB to this).

I have set up the HTCP (using SABnzbd) to switch the HTPC on at 3 every morning and turn it off again at around 4 ish).

During the aforementioned hour the following things take place:
  • CouchPotato starts searching for new movies based on my criteria
  • It then pushes these to SABnzbd on the Pi (using the Pi's SABnzbd's API) to initiate downloading
  • CouchPotato then scans the SD card of the Pi for all movies downloaded during the preceding 22 hours
  • It then moves these movies to the HTPC's HDD and deletes it from the Pi
  • It then renames the movies to a more user friendly format
  • SickBeard starts searching for new episodes of my series
  • It then pushes these to the Pi's SABnzbd
  • SickBeard then starts scanning the SD card of the Pi for new episodes
  • It then moves the episodes to the correct series folder and renames it to a user friendly format
  • Then it deletes it from the Pi
  • Both SB and CP then update my library (adds movie, episode info, etc)
  • SABnzb on the HTPC then sends me a mail to tell me what all it had done
  • If at any time during the above proves the HDD of the HTPC is idle for more than 5 minutes it shuts down (its usually just before 4)
Click to expand...

How'd you get the PC to switch off at specific times?
Is this what Wake-On Lan is all about?
 
Pho3nix said:
How'd you get the PC to switch off at specific times?
Is this what Wake-On Lan is all about?
Click to expand...
Easy. Its a setting in XBMC that, should the harddrive not being written to or read from for a set period of time then it turns the PC off.

WOL uses a a signal from another networked device to power up the device to which the signal is sent
 
Pho3nix said:
Apologies but I was away for a bit. As stated Plex works well when only 2 devices are streaming but at my house that can increase up to 5-6 streams(2 being HD) and it will kill the server unfortunately.
Luckily it was exam season and things cooled down a bit but I'm going to re-purpose my PC as a media pc and use the HP as a backup/download server.

Using the updated Plex client but still no joy.

OOC: How do you use the multi-user suport? They weren't to forth-coming on how this works.
Click to expand...

For multi-user support to work each user must create a MyPlex account, you then share which sections you want them to have access to from your servers page on the MyPlex page (https://my.plexapp.com/). Once you have done this then when that user logs in they will see what sections you shared with them and they will also have their own play progress status and On deck items, etc.

Hope this helps.
 
Pho3nix said:
How'd you get the PC to switch off at specific times?
Is this what Wake-On Lan is all about?
Click to expand...

Plenty of ways to get it to switch off at specific times.

Switching on (WOL) can be done from another device.

Ive installed the following to manage WOL on from my android phone:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kebab.Llama
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.owtroid.remotelauncherfree&feature

With Llama you can set it trigger the WOL at a certain time, or when you enter a specific aria (i.e. home/work). You obviously need to be connected to the same LAN...
 
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YingYang said:
Easy. Its a setting in XBMC that, should the harddrive not being written to or read from for a set period of time then it turns the PC off.

WOL uses a a signal from another networked device to power up the device to which the signal is sent
Click to expand...

In your setup does the Pi send a signal to the PC to turn it on?
 
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